Companions in Time
by Zenog
Summary: This is the story of the Director: one of the Doctor's closest companions, erased from existence in this universe. This too is the story of Solara: one of the first ones the Director meets in this strange new world he finds himself on. And this is the story of the greatness they achieve together. OC-centric, time travel (duh!), and characters from my other Pokémon fics will appear.


[Incoming Transmission]

As promised, here is the first chapter of my new story. I will also apologize immediately, as I will not actually be posting Chapter 1 of my other new story until I reach that point in this story; the chance for accidental spoilers is too high. But nonetheless...

* * *

Chapter 1: Solara

* * *

Long ago - or very recently, or still yet to happen, it all depends on how you view it - the Doctor fled from Gallifrey. He locked the Time War away from the rest of the universe, with very few others escaping before he had done so. One of these was a time lord known as the Director. He in fact escaped with the Doctor, though they were eventually separated - permanently - by forces beyond their control. The Doctor, along with everyone else whose lives he had touched in that universe, forgot him, his very existence erased.

However, not all that falls into the great Void That Is Between is lost forever. Eternities can pass outside the Void, while all that has ever entered always is exactly how it was when it entered. The Director, by quirk of fate, and utter chance, fell out of the Void That Is Between, and back into the Endless Sea of Time, and in a echo through the Void, was granted the one thing he cherished above all else in his original universe: his TARDIS.

And yes, he found himself in a fully different universe from his own, for where, indeed, would be the story if he were to merely go home and continue to travel alongside the Doctor?

Precisely. It would be nowhere near as fun.

* * *

"Quickly! Bring me that thingy over there!"

"This thingy?"

"No! Not that thingy, the other thingy! Over there!"

"The helmet-y thingy?"

"Yes! More work, less talk! Bring it here!"

The first person carefully but hastily placed the device on their head.

"Alright, it's going to make some weird noises and might send off some smoke. After it stops, it's going to pop out a pocket watch."

"A pocket watch?"

"Don't question it! Just keep the watch safe!"

"Why?"

"You humans and your questions! It'll contain part of my memories and all of my non-human-y-ness and if somebody else gets it then bad stuff will happen!"

"Oh. Anything else?"

Just as the first person was about to activate the device, he paused and said, "Actually, yes. If the smoke from the device is any color but blue, and especially if it's mauve…"

"Yes?"

"Run."

* * *

Some forest, somewhere

* * *

A small being, merely two feet tall, flitted through the trees. Or is flitting through the trees. Or will flit through the trees. It all depends on how you view it. For simplicity's sake and for yours, though, we'll view things as if they were in the past. So this creature, two feet tall, flitted through the trees at high speeds on small, fairy-like wings. That is, until something caught its attention. Now, normally, something such as this would not catch the attention of a mere human such as us, but this creature did catch it: a tremor in Time itself.

Of course, as was its self-imposed duty, the creature flew towards the epicenter of the tremor to fix whatever it was that had gone wrong with Time. The one thing that it did not expect to find, however, was itself.

Well, not exactly itself. The creature that had done the finding was in fact more of a pinkish color, while the one it had found was a vibrant green. The only problem with this was that, as a traveler in the great Sea of Time, the creature knew that there was no other like it; this creature it had found simply could not exist.

But there it was.

It did exist, and it the two were not the same creature, though they were remarkably identical in most respects. Both had the same, fairy-like wings; the same height; the same strange body structure. The first one could even feel the way that it distorted Time around itself; the same as she did.

And therein lay the largest difference between the two. It wasn't the color; it wasn't that they had slightly different brain structures, something she could tell as a pschic; it wasn't the fact that neither was even possible in the realm of rational thinking. No, it was that they were not the same gender. The first one could tell. She could sense it in the air around him, in his very mind: he was male.

She, obviously, was not.

It was the largest piece of evidence showing that they were not the same, and also that which shattered her world view.

There were more of her kind. She was not the only one, as she had once believed. She would finally have someone that she could travel alongside through the Endless Sea, a companion.

A companion in Time. The thought made her feel positively gi―

Suddenly, the one on the ground sat up.

"Where am I? No, better, when am I? I always find that that's more important." He stood up, inhaled deeply, and continued speaking. "The 17th century. Pretty dull times, not much interesting happening. Well, that's settled, where am I?"

He paused for a moment, adopting a thinking pose, hovering slightly off the ground. He looked down as he did so, slowly realizing that he was flying.

"Ooh! I'm flying! That's new; I've never been able to do that before."

He made a few experimental loops in the air, before he looked down at himself again, jerking back with a start.

"Hold up, what the bloody hell am I? I don't remember being a ruddy plant before!"

The first one finally decided to speak up, slightly dazed by the rather exuberant personality of the impossible sight before her. "What do you mean before?"

The other stopped his experimental flights, noticing that there was someone else there for the first time. "Well, it might have been before, maybe it was after. Time travel can get really confusing."

"You're a Traveler as well? I don't believe that there are others like me!"

"Well, you see, there's the problem; I'm not like you. I'm supposed to be something completely different and," he looked up and shook his tiny fist at the sky, shouting upwards, "not a bloody plant you insufferable meddler!"

"Who are you talking to? And what are you supposed to be?"

"Well, I'm talking to you, but I guess that what you were asking was who I was shouting at. Honestly, I don't know who exactly I was shouting at; I was just hoping to get the message across to at least one planet's metaphorical, literal, or combination thereof higher power. They all really like screwing with my life," he gave a small sigh, "but I guess I'm kind of one of those people that it's easy for them to screw with."

"Well, thanks for answering the first question, but who are you, and what are you supposed to be, and where are you from? In that order, preferably."

"Ah, yes, right, of course."

He turned towards her, with a devilish smirk, and a keen glint in his eye.

"Hello, I'm the Director. I am a Time Lord, or at least I'm supposed to be. I'm 2000 years old, and I'm from the planet Gallifrey. Also, for some reason, I'm a plant right now."

"You've mentioned that before."

"Have I? I thought I might have. No matter." The Director began flying off, before stopping suddenly and turning around.

"By the way, I've just realized that I haven't asked you two extremely important questions."

"What would those be?"

"Who are you, and what are we? I mean, despite the fact that we're different colors, we're obviously the same species."

"My name… It's been a long time since somebody asked that… I'm not sure…"

She sat on the ground in a thinking position remarkably similar to that which the Director had recently taken up while he was flying. The Director just floated nearby; he knew how difficult it could be to remember your name after years without speaking it.

"…Solara."

"Pardon?"

"My name. It's Solara."

The Director grinned and flew down to her, before grabbing her hand and shaking it enthusiastically.

"Lovely to meet you, Solara! Now what are we?"

"Well, the humans usually call me the Guardian of the Forest, but once or twice, they've referred to me as Celebi. So I guess that makes us both Celebi."

The Director made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "Pfft, humans, naming and claiming everything they see. I didn't ask what others called you or your species, I asked what your species was. Not theirs, yours. You were the first one, therefore, it is your species to name."

Solara was floored by that thought. It was true; she was defining herself by the names given to her by humans. She looked the Director in the eye with a conviction she had never felt before.

"Kihito. We are the Kihito."

"Lovely! Now we know what we are, and who we are!"

"But I don't know your name. You just gave me more of a title than an actual name."

"Ah, yes, well, you see, that's the thing. Names―and I don't mean just names that you give yourself, I mean true names―names are things of power. Solara, I'd wager that that's not even your true name, and, like all Travelers, you've locked your true name away so deeply in your mind that you don't even remember it.

"That's why I go by the Director. I once came across a race that could use words like that a long, long time ago with an old friend of mine. They discovered my true name, and they used it to erase my existence from that entire universe and shunt me into this one. I once was looking for a way back to my home, but I've realized that this universe needs me more. That's why I stay.

"But anyway, I've got this slight problem, and as I can see that you're a Traveler, I think you might be able to help me out."

"What's wrong?"

"Well, I seem to have misplaced about three hundred years of memories and a transtemporal chronometer. At least I think I misplaced it. It's really the only way that I could've ended up like this. Of course, it would've happened in the three hundred or so years of memories that I lost."

"Losing a watch turns you into a new species?"

The Director fluttered his wings agitatedly, replying, "No, no, the watch would've turned me into a different species so that I could escape pursuers, but I was expecting something a little closer to my normal species." He did a couple flips in the air, chuckling slightly after he finished. "It's alright though; I think I'm going to like flying a lot."

"So, allow me to get this straight. You―"

"Me!"

"―want me―"

"Yep, you!"

"―to help you find your lost watch."

"And almost three hundred years' worth of memories, and my spaceship."

"Oh, there's a spaceship, too? Lovely. This just keeps getting better and better the more that I find out about information that you're withholding from me," Solara replied sarcastically. "It's almost like you are trying everything you can to get me to help you by revealing more and more unbelievable things. And anyway, it's just a spaceship! Travel through Time and get a new one!"

"In my defense, it is really neat spaceship, it's bigger on the inside, and it can travel through time, too."

Solara just scoffed and said, "I don't actually care that it can travel through time, because I can too."

The Director stopped moving suddenly, just looking at her slack-jawed. After regaining his composure, he began firing questions again.

"Really? No, that's not possible; you don't have anything to help you! How do you do it? If you can do it, does that mean I can too? That's brilliant! Being able to travel without the TARDIS―"

"Tardis?"

"No, you're pronouncing it wrong. It's an acronym. T.A.R.D.I.S. It stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It's my spaceship. But no, traveling without the TARDIS, that would make her sad…"

"Who?"

"The TARDIS, of course! She's a sentient being after all. Just because she's a spaceship doesn't mean that she can't be alive."

"Never mind that. Yes, we can travel through time, or at least I can, so that should mean you can too."

"Oh, that is brilliant! Is there any time that you can think of that would be a good time to try going to to test out my abilities? And if we find any of my missing stuff, then that'll just be a bonus!"

"Well, there is this one time that I can think of that would be just perfect. It's a really big temporal focal point; flotsam and jetsam in the Void that ever find their way back into the Sea always funnel out there."

"Sounds lovely! I've always been a great fan of flotsam and jetsam!"

Solara held out a hand to the Director, with a slight smile on her face. "Well then, Director. Shall we?"

"Oh, yes, I can't wait to see it."

* * *

Undisclosed location

* * *

"I see that you've returned, Agent Elazar. However, you seem to be lacking something that I asked for."

"I apologize for not locating the Director, milord, but I―"

"I do not wish to hear excuses, Agent Elazar, I wish for either the Director or something that can be used against him. If you are unable to provide either…"

The voice trailed off as two heavily armored figures appeared out of the shadows behind the throne.

"No! No, that won't be necessary, milord! I didn't manage to get the Director, but we did manage to find this boy. The intelligence division confirmed him as one who has been seen with the Director many times before."

"…Show him to me."

Two more guards appeared through the doors of the audience chamber, dragging a figure between them. They shoved him unceremoniously onto the floor in front of the throne, his black trench coat pooling around him, then retreated.

"What is your name, boy?"

The boy smirked, before looking up, a deep purple eye and an electric blue eye locking with the cold, steel grey eyes of the man on the throne. He blew a wisp of black hair out of his face, before replying to the question.

"My name's Ash. Just Ash; I don't have a last name, or at least not one I want to tell you."

One of the guards kicked him in the ribs. "Tell Lord Nagao what he wants!"

The boy coughed up a little blood. "Whoops, looks like I got some blood on your nice, clean floor," he joked. "Fine, I'll tell you my name. I'm Ash Ketchum, son of the late Jonathan Ketchum, and the heir and owner of the Rocket Corporation."

Nagao's eyes widened slightly in surprise at this information, before he asked, "And you know the Director, correct?"

"Sure, one might even call me a friend of his. But you've forgotten three important things regarding your want to capture the Director."

"What would those be?"

"One, I'm the owner of the largest scientific research corporations in the world, which also happens to have specialists in both political and corporate espionage. My agents are looking for me even as we speak.

"Two, I may be the Director's friend, but there are only three things he'd actually risk his life for: his missing memories, his TARDIS, and his girlfriend―provided that they've met at this point, of course. Time travel is so confusing."

He stopped there, until Nagao prompted, "And the third reason?"

"Ah, right, I knew I was forgetting something." He smirked again as his purple eye began to glow brightly. "Three," he said, "I was raised by Mew, and my half-sister is a psychic. Do you really think that having my hands and feet tied up is going to keep me from escaping?"

Nagao barely had time to shout "Stop him!" before the intensity of the light from Ash's eye grew to an unbearable brightness, causing everyone in the room to avert their eyes. When the light finally died down, all that was left in his place were the ropes used to bind his arms and legs.

Nagao ground his teeth in frustration quietly, before smiling a rather cold, shark-like smile.

"Oh, Agent Elazar! I have one final request of you…"

"Yes, milord?" was Elazar's fearful reply.

"Come over here, will you?" said Nagao, motioning to one of the guards behind his throne, who readied their massive blade in anticipation of that to come.

* * *

Props to anyone who can guess what story the Ash I have at the end is from! Not that there aren't a million stories that it could be...

Also, I will include an OC in this story created by the first person to name the item used on the Director in the first scene, the name of the race that banished the Director to this dimension, and the other vague reference from the first scene, as well as the name of the first episode that each appeared in from the modern series. And, if you want, the first character from each of those episodes to say the name of it. If you do that you also get to choose the first enemy that the Director fights in the story. Or at least the next one, if I make it past that point by the time I get an answer.

Oh, and, as always, R&R (please?)

[Transmission Terminated]


End file.
